Cricket's cheap experiment
Twenty20 began as a county gimmick, invented in 2003 to fill English grounds on midweek evenings. India's board voted against the format, and when the ICC scheduled the first World Twenty20 for South Africa in September 2007 it sent a squad without Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid or Sourav Ganguly. Mahendra Singh Dhoni was twenty-six and leading a global campaign for the first time. Nobody treated the trophy as important. The timing was pointed, though. Five months earlier the fifty-over World Cup in the Caribbean had sprawled across seven weeks, lost India and Pakistan in the opening round and finished in darkness and confusion. Cricket badly needed something short.
Twelve teams, thirteen days
Four groups of three, two through from each to the Super Eights, the whole thing done inside a fortnight across Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban. Zimbabwe beat Australia in the second match of the tournament. Sri Lanka made 260 for 6 against Kenya, the highest total the international game had then seen. India and Pakistan tied at Kingsmead and settled it with a bowl-out: three Indian bowlers hit the stumps, three Pakistanis missed, and the tie-break method was quietly abandoned soon afterwards. Australia arrived as the best one-day side on the planet and lost their semi-final. New Zealand, who had beaten India and England, lost theirs.
Six balls at Kingsmead
One over outlived everything else. On 19 September, after a short exchange with Andrew Flintoff, Yuvraj Singh faced Stuart Broad and hit all six deliveries for six. He reached fifty in twelve balls, a record that still stands. India made 218 for 4 and won by 18 runs. Broad was twenty-one at the time; he would be part of an England side lifting this same trophy less than three years later.
Five runs at the Wanderers
India met Pakistan again in the final on 24 September, a draw of luck that did more for the tournament than any promotion could. Gautam Gambhir made 75 from 54 balls in a total of 157 for 5, which looked thin. Irfan Pathan and RP Singh broke the top order, then Misbah-ul-Haq very nearly took the game away on his own, carrying the chase into a final over bowled by the part-timer Joginder Sharma. Six were needed from four balls. Misbah scooped to Sreesanth at short fine leg. India won by five.
What followed
The BCCI had spent four years resisting Twenty20. Six months after Johannesburg it launched the Indian Premier League, and the economics of the whole sport rearranged themselves around a format that had barely existed a decade earlier. Players unknown in September 2007 were franchise property by April 2008. India, meanwhile, had won a world title for the first time since 1983, with a captain and a squad the selectors had picked almost casually.